To use Redis with Ruby, you need a Ruby Redis client. The following sections demonstrate the use of redis-rb, a Ruby client library for Redis. Additional Ruby clients for Redis can be found under the Ruby section of the Redis Clients page.

Install redis-rb

See redis-rb’s README file for installation instructions.

Method 1

Use gem to install redis-rb:

gem install redis

Method 2

  1. Add the following line to your Gemfile:

    gem 'redis'

  2. Then run:

    bundle install

Connect to Redis

The following code creates a connection to Redis using redis-rb:

require 'redis'

redis = Redis.new (
    :host => 'hostname',
    :port => port,
    :password => 'password')

To adapt this example to your code, replace the following values with your database’s values:

  • In line 4, set :host to your database’s hostname or IP address
  • In line 5, set :port to your database’s port
  • In line 6, set :password to your database’s password

Example code for Redis commands

Once connected to Redis, you can read and write data with Redis command functions.

The following code snippet assigns the value bar to the Redis key foo, reads it back, and prints it:

# open a connection to Redis
...
 
redis.set('foo', 'bar');
value = redis.get('foo');
puts value

Example output:

$ ruby example_redis-rb.rb
bar

SSL

The redis-rb client does not support SSL connections natively.

For an added security measure, you can secure the connection using stunnel or this redis-rb fork, which includes SSL support.